1500 Miles and No Gun
by WinterSound0554
Summary: "What Vic needs to do right now is find Walt Longmire before she loses any semblance of control and strangles him with her bare hands." A story in which Vic is slightly homicidal, Walt is annoyed, Ruby is concerned and Cady is just confused.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello!**

 **This is my first Longmire story! I have not written Fanfiction in quite a while...but I am actively procrastinating on a pathology assignment (Yay college!)**

 **I hope I have managed to keep in compliance with the characters. Note that this is taking placing several years after the season 6 finale (approximately 16). So just keep that in mind while reading!**

 **Any comments/questions/critiques you have are welcomed! Feedback is always fantastic!**

 **I own nothing...usual disclaimers apply.**

 **Thank you for reading!**

* * *

 **Chapter One**

 **1500 Miles and No Gun**

As her Subaru careens down the gravel road, Vic grits her teeth and prays to God that Walter is home.

She hasn't driven down this road in ten years and yet, nothing has changed since that last time she left the cabin. The mountains are the same, the grassy meadows and lush green forests that surround her in every direction. The sky is the same periwinkle blue, a cloudless Wyoming spring day. And had this been under any other circumstance, she probably would have enjoyed the view. Eased off the accelerator a little bit, maybe slowed down to a leisurely eighty miles an hour. Instead, with every curve gravel skids out from underneath her tires, pinging against the doors. Clouds of dust kick up behind her.

"You want to slow down a bit?" Callie flicks a strand of neon pink hair behind her shoulder and rolls her at her mother "I'm sure Dad will probably want to kill me while I'm still alive."

Vic rolls her eyes right back at her daughter, hands clamped on the steering wheel and glares at the studs dotting Callie's ear, the industrial bar running through the top of one "Not funny."

"Do you actually think I care?" Callie snips and replaces her earbuds "Whatever _mom_."

Vic can still hear the tinny beat of music over the pinging of gravel. She heaves a sigh as Walt's cabin appears around the bend. Like the mountains, his cabin hadn't changed in the years she had been gone—it was the same sturdy log cabin she had remembered, that she had shared with Walt for years. She feels a familiar pang and involuntarily, her hands tighten on the wheel. There's no car, no rusting Bronco sitting in the drive but that doesn't mean anything—for all she knows, Walt had absconded into the forest, surviving solely on spite and tree bark.

The Subaru skids to a stop and Vic wrenches the car into park, grabbing her keys. She takes off her sunglasses and levels a glare at her daughter "Callie."

Callie doesn't look up from her phone.

"Hey! I'm talking to you," Vic snaps and reaches forward, tugging out an earbud "I'm just going to the door okay?"

Callie doesn't look up at her "And?"

"And…just, don't do anything." Vic jams the key into the pocket of her jeans and strides off towards the cabin, glancing back every so often to make sure that Callie isn't sprinting out across the Wyoming countryside. Weirder things had happened, that was certain.

She pounds on the door "Walt!"

There's no reply and she smacks her palm against the door again "Walter Longmire, open up."

She grits her teeth and peers in through the window, wondering if this day could get worse. Her eyes adjust to the dark cabin interior. Nothing looks too different—the couch is the same, even the knitted afghan thrown haphazardly over the rocking chair in the corner hasn't changed, like the cabin is stuck in a time paradox.

She knocks again for good measure, threatens to kick down the door if her doesn't open up and looks inside one final time. Now that she's looking again, there are tiny, subtle differences that make her uneasy, even though she isn't sure why. Like the pictures hanging on the walls, in actual frames. Or the modern yet tasteful area rug obscuring the living room hardwood. Or the sunflower printed rubber boots sitting next to the oak bench by the door.

Unless Walt had started wearing sunflower rubber boots in her absence, she figures that it just her crappy day just got a hell of a lot worse.

* * *

"This town is shit."

Vic pulls her Subaru outside of the old library, which like the cabin hadn't changed. Vic privately agrees with her daughter-this town is shit and incredibly, it hadn't changed at all. There were a couple of new stores, a brand-new pub sitting where the old agriculture co-op had been but aside from that, it looked exactly the same.

"Language Callie." Vic knows there is no point in reprimanding her daughter but she it's so ingrained her, it's habit. She pulls in behind the Absaroka County Sheriff truck, wondering just who was driving her truck now. She had stayed in contact with a couple of people for a while—Ferg, Cady, Ruby but as things had gotten busy as she settled into her new life, the emails had grown more distant and sporadic. Now, all the news she heard from Absaroka came on the back of Ruby's annual Christmas card.

"C'mon," she marches towards the police station Callie in tow. Figures it's best this way—at least she's less of a flight risk.

Callie eyes the building critically "I remember this place."

Vic pauses with her hand on the door handle, the faded letters peeling off the glass "Yeah? Last time you were here you were just tiny."

"I coloured at Ruby's desk while you caught a serial killer."

"Callie."

"And while you figured out some murder. And worked weeks on some drug case. You put my crib a cell."

Vic sighs "Callie, please."

"I understand," Callie smiles sweetly at her "You and dad were so hellbent on your careers that you couldn't make time for your own child. No biggie."

"Okay," Vic bites her tongue and and wrenches the door open "Up the stairs. Now."

The nostalgia hits Vic harder then she thought it would, considering she didn't consider herself a sentimental person but as she walks up those stairs, she can't help but stop the sudden rush of memories from her Absaroka days, a large number involving Walt. She glances over at Callie who's staring at her phone and shakes her head. She does not need to reminisce right now. What she does need to do is find goddamn Walt Longmire before she loses any semblance of control and strangles him with her bare hands.

She pushes the office door open with a bang and figures it's probably a good thing that her gun is more then a thousand miles away.

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 **Thank you for reading! Any reviews are greatly appreciated.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello!**

 **A big thank you to everybody who has supported this story! You guys are fantastic!**

 **Another update...once again, I'm procrastinating on studying. For anybody who is interested, I'm studying to be a medical radiation technologist, which is a fancy name for x-ray tech (I think they're called radiographers in the States? Not sure!)**

 **Once again, usual disclaimers apply. There is a bit more swearing in this chapter...you have been warned!**

 **If you are enjoying this story or have any comments/suggestions, reviews are always welcome!**

* * *

It shouldn't be any sort of surprise, given that nothing else in the entire county had changed that Ruby is still sitting at that desk, carefully arranging bright yellow sticky notes filled with neat cursive. Still Vic pauses, momentarily trying to figure out just how _old_ Ruby had to be. After a second, she just shakes her head. As long as the world turned and the sun shone, Ruby would be waging a one women war organizing the Absaroka County sheriff's office.

"Can I help you, ma'am?" Ruby looks up with her usual smile, adjusting the brightly coloured chiffon scarf coiled around her neck. Her face was more lined, the grey in her bob cut a little more evident but still, it was the same Ruby that Vic remembered.

Vic grits her teeth—she figures by the end of the day, she's going to have to get dentures and crosses her arms "Ruby, it's me."

Behind her, Callie sniggers. Vic's head pounds painfully.

"I—Vic?" Ruby's eyes grow wide and she stands up, a hand covering her mouth "Well, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Vic Moretti?"

"Yeah," Vic rubs her face, trying to ward off the impending headache "Hey Ruby."

Ruby doesn't look like she can believe her eyes and continues to stare at Vic, apparently incapable of speech. Vic doesn't quite know what to do—march right into that office and demand that Cady tells her where Walt is? Or better yet, hope he's here somewhere, haunting the sheriff's department like a ghost. A ghost with control issues and trust issues and zero hobbies. Instead Vic sighs and gestures towards Callie who is still texting, eyes glued to the screen "You remember Callie?"

"You and Walter's little girl? Of course, I remember." Ruby is surveying Callie with a look of thinly veiled horror, apparently undecided about what part of Callie's appearance to be most offended by. Vic couldn't quite decide herself—was it the pink streaks in her hair? Or the nose and lip piercings? The school-mandated kilt hiked up well past dress code policy? Or that stupid, _stupid_ tattoo?

It was definitely a toss up between the tattoo and the piercings. And above all of that, the behaviour.

Vic had been a terror of a teenager, but she was a saint compared to her daughter.

Ruby hastily arranges her features into a smile and rushes towards Vic "Well, how about a hug? And I'll call up Ferg and you two can pull up a chair and I'll put on the kettle for tea and we'll catch up—"

"Look Ruby," Vic clears her throat, tries to think a delicate way to phrase her words " I didn't know where else to go. So please tell me just tell me where the _hell_ Walt is."

Vic Moretti does not do delicate. She winces as Ruby literally stumbles backwards like she's been hit and tries to rectify the situation, glancing backwards to make sure that Callie is still there "Look, we will catch up. Soon, I promise. But I've had one hell of a day and I really, _really_ need to see Walt. Immediately."

"Vic," Ruby begins to chortle with apparent disbelief, her face rapidly reddening "Vic honey, you haven't come to see Walt in ten years. You took his daughter away." Her voice raises by an octave and she glares at Vic "I don't think you can just waltz right in here—"

"Ruby," Vic glares right back; Ruby's stronger a hurricane, she can handle the wrath of a Moretti "If you don't tell me where Walt is, I will find him. I will drive around this county until I find him. It may take days but I swear I will."

Ruby regards Vic aggressively, glares at her with an open hostility that Vic had never fathomed a woman like Ruby could possess. The receptionist crosses her arms over her pastel knit sweater, shakes her head with pity at Callie.

"Then I suggest you start driving."

* * *

"Well, that was fucking pointless."

"Language Callie!" Vic slams down on the accelerator to pass a slow-moving farm truck, rusty and loaded up with bales of hay "I'm not gonna tell you again."

"Or what, you'll tell dad?" Callie rolls her thickly made up eyes. "Such a threat. So scary." Callie fiddles with her cellphone, looks up to meet Vic's glare. Vic feels a pang in her chest—Callie had always been a dead ringer for Vic, somewhere beneath the thorns and sarcasm and tattoos. Except for her eyes. Callie had her father's eyes, a fact that plagued Vic every single day "Let's face it, you're a shitty mother. What's dad going to do about it?"

"C'mon Cals. Don't do this—"

"Good God," Callie seethes, eyes glinting "Are you actually fucking kidding me? Now you're gonna play the parent role, the responsible—"

"Callie."

"Selfless—"

"That's enough!" Vic is yelling, her Subaru flying down the cracked of the empty country road, a road she was sure that she had gone down a million times before but seemed absolutely foreign.

"Single mother, who always gave her _all,_ a literal mother Theresa, who did it all on her own because she was so fucking hard done by."

The road blurs in front of Vic. She's glad she's wearing sunglasses.

"Not so nice is it now?" Callie pants, her face twisting into a bitter smile "Not so nice when we both know the truth that this is all your fault. Everything about this is your fault. And you can't do a thing about it, you stupid bitch."

It's not the first time Callie has called her a bitch. It's the first time it hurts like this though.

Vic looks out the windshield, at the rolling fields dotted with wildflowers and wide blue Wyoming skies eclipsed by mountains. A land so vast and empty and wild that when she had first arrived in Absaroka all those years ago, it had scared her, more then any criminal ever had.

Hands tightening around the wheel, she wonders why the hell she hadn't just murdered Walt while she had the chance.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading! Have a great day!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hello!**

 **I finally got some time to update-yay! Please enjoy, leave your comments and criticisms! Feedback is always appreciated!**

 **I know this story is little different-but hang in there! All will be revealed eventually! I do switch perspectives halfway through (Which I don't usually do) but it seemed to fit in this situation.**

 **Usual disclaimers! apply Thank you for reading**

* * *

 **Chapter Three**

"License and registration please ma'am."

Somehow, unbelievably Vic's hellish day had gotten worse. She wasn't aware that it was possible and yet, it had. She just shakes her head as she reaches over to the glove compartment to dig out the appropriate papers. Callie is smirking.

Satan himself was riding along for this one, that was the only explanation Vic could come up with.

The officer at the door is Ferg. Of course, it's Ferg, maybe a couple of pounds heavier and minus the vast majority of his hair, sweating under the Wyoming sun in his deputy uniform. There's a tarnished gold band on his ring finger and a multicoloured rainbow loom bracelet around a wrist. Vic stares at it as she hands over the papers like it's the weirdest part of her day.

Ferg as a father. Huh.

"Are you aware that you were going thirty miles over the limit miss?"

He doesn't recognize her. Of course, nothing about of the situation screams Vic—not the Subaru, or the Maryland plates or the hair, streaked with grey. Maybe if they had been Pennsylvania—no, probably not even then. Vic was certain that Ferg was not expecting the woman behind the wheel of a speeding car on a Thursday afternoon in rural Wyoming to be his former co-worker and ex friend.

The ex friend part was her fault. She was aware of that, that was for sure.

Vic waits impatiently, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel as he scans over the license and suddenly freezes. The same reaction as Ruby, almost identical. Vic would have laughed if the whole situation hadn't been so mortifying.

"Vic?"

"Hey Ferg." she smiles weakly, waves a hand "How've you been?"

* * *

Walt glows with pride as he watches Nina Little Sun carefully guide Jenny, the paint pony around the dirt ring. When Nina had first come in with her aunt nearly two years ago, she had been too scared to even touch the horses. Now, the twelve-year-old was strong and confident, her face scrunched up in concentration and determination.

It was only a trot around a dirt ring on a Thursday afternoon and Walt was still standing in the centre but it might as well have been the Olympics.

Beside him, Amber Little Sun beams as Nina circles them "She's so beautiful." Amber envelopes him in a hug, her words muffled in his shoulder "She's the sun."

Walt couldn't agree more.

Nina's lesson wraps up and Walt leans back as he watches the girl and her aunt groom Jenny, waiting for his next client. The barn is tidy, stall doors open to reveal the beautiful day outside. When Walt had first started his therapeutic riding barn, he had two horses. That number had grown to seven and enough clients to hire two Cheyenne kids from the res as stable hands. One of them, Alex nods at Walt as he walks by, pushing a wheelbarrow of manure.

Ella Sparks was his next lesson and she was never late. Walt fidgets with the ring, glances out at the driveway to see if she'd arrived yet. Ella was eighteen, had been in a wreck on senior prom night thirteen months ago and lost her leg. Walt didn't usually work with amputees—it was mostly kids, autism and behaviour issues but he had made an exception for Ella. Because Ella was a teenager and stubborn and headstrong and reminded him just a little too much of Callie.

He hadn't seen his daughter in two years and every singe day, it hurt like hell.

He hadn't seen Vic in ten years and that hurt like hell too.

He pushes the thought away because Vic was gone, there was nothing he could do about that. Callie was gone too, no matter how much he tried to avoid that painful reality. The days of her short summer visits had long since passed.

Dana, his receptionist and full time stable hand, pokes her head out from the office, her long black hair pulled back in a plait "There's a lady here to see you."

"Ella Sparks?"

"Nope," Dana pauses, looks like she's choosing her words carefully "Um...not a client."

"Tell her to book an appointment with me and I'll get back to her. I have a lesson."

"Yeah, that's what I told her," Dana grimaces and looks down at a paper in her hand "And she told me that if you don't come out here immediately, she'll strangle you. Or shoot you but she has no gun, so she may have to use yours." Dana looks up from her paper, holds up the paper "That's a direct quote."

If Walt didn't know any better, he would have sworn that it was Vic. He also knew that it definitely was not Vic because Vic would never travel anywhere without her gun.

"Ella Sparks is here," Walt says, reaching for a grooming kit "Tell her that she can just wait."

Dana winces "Do I have to?"

"Yes."

It's not even thirty seconds later when that door bursts open and Walt is confronted by Victoria Moretti for the first time in ten years

"Walter Longmire, I am going to _murder_ you!"

A normal man may have expected an apology. Maybe a hug or some tears.

Somehow, deep down Walt knew that this was the only way that their reunion could have gone. Vic yelling like a homicidal maniac and him standing there, a little concerned and rather bewildered.

Some things never change.

* * *

 **Again, thank you for reading! Predictions? Why do you think Vic finally came back to Wyoming? How is Walt going to react to her and Callie? And who do those sunflower boots belong to?**


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